Dunc Breaks the Record Read Free

behind it.
    Dunc grabbed at the harness and fought to get free. He clawed, missed the release, and found it again when he was upside down. Air bubbles streamed up from his nostrils. He pulled, tore free, then reached back for Amos.
    And missed.
    He had one glimpse of Amos, head down, eyes squinched shut, stiff as a poker under water. Then the current ripped the glider away from Dunc, and Amos disappeared downstream.

.4
    Amos was dreaming.
    In the dream he was standing in the center of his living room, turned toward the door, ready to go outside, when the phone rang.
    Even in the dream he had good form. He wheeled in one smooth motion and felt his legs power him, driving him off sideways at a perfect angle to grab the phone on the wall just inside the kitchen door, to get it by that all-important second ring. There was another phone on the end table in the living room, but his mind, quick as a computer, reckoned it to be nearly eight centimeters farther than the one in the kitchen.
    Both legs driving, arms pumping, a little spit out the side of his mouth—classic form.
    Then the cat.
    “Amos!”
    They didn’t even have a cat. His sister Amy, whom Amos called the Dragon, was allergic to cats. But in the dream there was a cat. A big old tom, scarred and mangy, and just as Amos made the pivot it moved from beneath the dining-room table and stepped perfectly between his ankles. As the phone began the second ring, he started down. With one clawing hand he caught the phone—just as his face slammed into the carpet so hard, he felt the fabric drive through his skin.…
    “Amos—wake up.…”
    Amos opened his eyes.
    For a moment he couldn’t remember anything, and he was startled to see Dunc leaning over him wearing a helmet and apparently wrapped in some kind of red cloth.
    “Dunc?”
    “Oh, man, I thought you were gone this time.” Dunc rolled Amos on his side. “You must have puked five gallons of water.”
    “What are you doing here?” Amos stared atDunc. “I was just going to answer the phone.… Oh. Oh. Now I remember. It was a dream. Man, even in my dreams I can’t get to the phone.”
    Dunc stood. He had grabbed some of the material from the glider and pulled the glider off Amos so he could pump his chest, and he was now tangled in the cloth. He pulled it away and dropped it onto the ground. “I can’t believe I found you.”
    “What happened?”
    “You want the whole story?” Dunc asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Well, we decided to break the record for two boys our age on a hang glider—”
    “No, I remember all that. I mean in the river, with the glider. What happened?”
    “We got separated. I broke loose, and the current took you on down. It was just a fluke—you got caught up on a snag that jutted out from the bank, and I saw the red of the glider cloth. Otherwise you would have been in trouble.”
    Amos stared at him. “This isn’t trouble?”
    “Well—not as much as it could have been.”
    “Dunc,
we
didn’t decide to break the record.
You
decided to break the record, and if
you
hadn’t decided to break the record,
we
wouldn’t be in this fix.”
    “Amos—”
    “Admit it.”
    “Amos—”
    “Admit it now. It’s all your fault.”
    “All of it?”
    “Yes.”
    “Even the thermal?”
    “Everything. Everything in the whole world that has ever gone wrong is completely and totally your fault, starting with maybe the Second World War and going right up to the present time and maybe even in the future.”
    “All right. It’s all my fault.”
    “Thank you—I feel much better now.” Amos took his helmet off and leaned over. He wiggled his head to clear the water out of his ears, then stopped and looked up at Dunc with his head cocked. “So what do we do now?”
    Dunc didn’t answer right away. He took his own helmet off, pulled his jacket and T-shirt off, and wrung them out. Then he sat on a rock, pulled his shoes and pants off, and hung all his clothing on a branch to dry.
    Taking it all